Alternative Famous Firsts
Derric Tanner
PM Drive
KNRK (94/7fm)/Portland, OR
KITZ AM 1400, I was a board op for a talk radio station that broadcast out of a mall.
Bad Company and Damn Yankees when I was in 7th grade.
Live - Throwing Copper, technically not the first I bought, but it was the first one I listened to out of my first Columbia House order.
Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse when I was still on college radio.
Audiovault froze during my third on-air shift at LIVE105, had to call our engineer at 3am.
Carrie Danger
Afternoon Drive Host
WNWV 107.3 Alternative Cleveland
Morning Tech at Maverick Media in Lima, Ohio. It was a great gig for a 21 year old who was hungry for a foot in the door!
My mom and I would go to Riverfest in Clarksville, TN each year and I'm almost positive LFO was the big act we went to see.
If we're talking vinyl it would have been the Cuban Pete album from The Mask. I found it in the $1 bin in NYC. First CD would have been Spice Girls "Spice World" of course.
Oh gosh, it's so hard to remember but I believe it was a local band called Mr. Moon in Norwalk, Ohio.
My first dead air experience was the very first time I was filling in for the midday host on my first station, 104.9 The Eagle. The first break was approaching and I was so nervous and cracked the mic... but little did I know the board wasn't live so I was just talking to myself. My PD never bothered to show me how to turn the board on because I never used that studio! Embarrassing but a good lesson to always make sure your board is on!
Crowley (but my friends call me Mister)
Mornings (KILO Production Director)
KRXP (X1039)/Colorado Springs, CO
101.5 K-Rock in "The Little Apple," Manhattan, KS. I just thought it'd be more fun than fast food while I was in college, a lark, and the radio gravity well done got me.
Summer Sanitarium 2003 Brother, Limp Bizkit covering The Who And Women Tryna Dance Sexily To Metallica and me sober cuz I got carded. What a show!
Green Day's Insomniac, got it from W*lmart the day it was released, and that was the day I first encountered the phenomenon that everything a band puts out AFTER you discover them will never match up to what had existed prior.
Lemme give my first two for the fun juxtaposition: Avenged Sevenfold and Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. Avenged Sevenfold was doing their first tour and press after the Rev died, so they were NOT feeling it, and I was trying to be funny, joking about them fighting Metallica or something, just a mess. It was miserable for all of us. BUT then Stephin Merritt, a notoriously difficult interview, after a rocky start actually went shockingly well! He was even better at my job than me: I asked about the 6ths out of nowhere, and he busts out a "If any of your listeners don't know, The 6ths was a collaborative project where..." He might have hated it but damn he was a pro!
Running board for some sports game, forgot to put the playlist back into auto after it was over, and of course my drive home was shorter than that first song, so didn't hear about it until getting a call at 5:30 am the next day. Off all night!
